There are various shutter assembly designs known in the prior art and the majority of these, such as exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,991,518, 2,545,874 and 5,469,658, all utilize gears of, various forms, which are secured to a pivot rod and to at least one end of the slats. The gears are interconnected together and displaceable by turning a gear or interconnecting them by a rack whereby to adjust the position of the slats. A disadvantage of most of these mechanisms is that they are time-consuming to install, require precision in the assembly of various component parts of the mechanisms and in most cases the slat pivot positions are fixed and therefore it is difficult and time-consuming to adapt louvers to openings which vary in size. To do so, the top and bottom block members of the frame need to be modified to compensate for the increase length of the shutter and accordingly the shutter is not balanced and esthetically pleasing. In order to remedy this disadvantage U.S. Pat. No. 5,469,658 suggests the attachment of the gears to the pivot pins of the slats by the use of wedges which are inserted only after the assembly of the slats within the frame and with the gears of each slat disposed in engagement with the rack. This is a very time-consuming task and not a very practical one to solve the above-noted problem of the prior art as the assembly is still very time-consuming, and not practical for assembly particularly by non-skilled labour.
There is also a need to provide a shutter assembly which can be assembled by parts which interconnect together without using glue while still providing a rigid shutter frame which will not deform or become undone. There is also a need to provide a louver adjusting mechanism which is reliable, which is capable of maintaining the slats at a desired angle and which is also capable of locking the slats in a closed position. There is also a need to provide a shutter assembly which is esthetically pleasing. There is a still further need to provide a shutter assembly having a louver mounting system which is flexible and which can provide easy conversion for the mounting of slats at different spacing therebetween.